Renting in Uruguay without a local guarantor

A garantía de alquiler is a guarantee that someone else — an institution, an insurer or a bank — will pay your landlord if you stop paying. It is not the security deposit, it is not the first month, and it is not money you hand to the landlord. It is a third party standing behind you, and you pay that third party for the service.

This is the thing that trips up nearly every newcomer. People arrive expecting the system they know at home: one month deposit, one month advance, keys. In Uruguay the landlord wants a named institution on the contract, and the estate agent will not even show you some apartments until you can say which garantía you are going to use.

The reason is on the landlord's side, not yours. Recovering a property from a tenant who stops paying is slow and expensive here, so the guarantee is the landlord's real protection. Once you understand that they are buying certainty rather than punishing you, the negotiation gets a lot easier.

There are five practical routes. The table below is the honest summary — the rest of this guide explains why most foreigners can only use two of them in their first year.

Figures below are indicative for 2026 and move with the market and with each provider's rules. Treat them as the shape of the cost, and confirm the current number before you commit.

This is the most important paragraph in this guide, and it is the one you will not find on the international relocation blogs. All three of these options are built around one assumption: that you are already employed in Uruguay, on the books, with a payment history here. You are not, yet.

ANDA is a members' association supervised by the Central Bank, and its guarantee is typically priced at around 3% of the rent per month on top of a member subscription. To approve you it evaluates your income and your job tenure, and it commonly asks for your cédula and your last three Uruguayan payslips — six if part of your pay is variable. There is usually a rule that the rent cannot exceed roughly 40% of your nominal salary, and a minimum rent amount for Montevideo properties.

Private insurers such as Porto Seguro work the same way. The annual premium is commonly around 80–90% of one month's rent — so budget roughly one month of rent per year of contract, often payable in instalments — but approval typically requires a minimum period of local employment (three months is a common threshold), recent payslips, and a clean record in the Clearing de Informes credit registry.

CGN, the state-backed guarantee arranged through the Agencia Nacional de Vivienda, is the strictest of the three for our purposes. It is built on an Informe de Líquido Disponible — an official certificate of how much of your Uruguayan salary or pension is free of other deductions — with a minimum period of continuous formal income. If your income comes from abroad, there is nothing for that certificate to describe.

The BHU route. The Banco Hipotecario del Uruguay holds a cash deposit that acts as the landlord's guarantee for the life of the contract, and — this is the point — approval does not depend on a credit score, a local salary or an employment history. It depends on having the capital.

The amount is agreed with the landlord and is commonly capped at around five months of rent for residential property. The money is deposited after the contract is signed, within a short window, and you get a receipt that goes with the lease. When the contract ends and you have met your obligations, you get it back with its value protected rather than eroded by inflation.

For most foreigners in their first year, this is the answer. It is expensive in the sense that a large sum is locked up and not earning you anything — but it is the one route where a landlord's answer is a clean yes, and it is why people who arrive with capital sign leases in days while people relying on paperwork wait months.

Yes, legally. A 2020 reform — the Ley de Urgente Consideración, Ley 19.889 — created a lease process that does not require a guarantee, in exchange for a faster and clearer path for the landlord if things go wrong. It exists precisely for tenants who cannot produce a local guarantor.

The catch is that it is optional for both sides. The landlord has to agree to it and it has to be documented correctly as that type of contract from the start — you cannot convert an ordinary lease into one later. Many landlords and agencies still default to demanding a traditional garantía simply out of habit, and some will not offer the sin garantía route at all.

So the practical advice is blunt: ask for it by name. When you contact an agency, say you are looking for properties available sin garantía under the LUC. It changes which apartments they show you. Expect to be asked for more months up front in exchange, which is a reasonable trade and is usually negotiable.

More than people budget for. The guarantee is only one line in the move-in cost, and the others add up fast. Below is a realistic picture for a long-term lease; short-term and furnished rentals work differently and usually ask for less.

Agency commission is a real cost and is customary on agency-listed properties. It is worth asking early who pays it and whether it is negotiable, because on a quiet listing it sometimes is.

Not always to sign, but effectively yes to live normally. Some landlords will sign with a passport, particularly on furnished or short-term lets. But the cédula is what lets you put the electricity, water and internet accounts in your own name, and it is what the guarantee providers ask for first.

This creates the sequencing problem that catches almost everyone: you want an apartment to prove an address, you want a cédula to open accounts, and some steps want the other one done first. The way out is to overlap them rather than run them in order — start the residency paperwork, take a short-term furnished rental for the first month or two, and move to a long lease once your provisional cédula is in hand.

Treating the first rental as temporary on purpose is the single most useful decision a new arrival can make. It converts a blocking problem into a scheduling one.

Almost all of them come from not knowing the garantía exists until an agent mentions it, by which point the apartment is gone.